Interviewing and Learning from Successful Authors

Tag: marketing

We had our first official guest on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast tonight! Jason Chen, the founder of StoryBundle.com, joined us to talk about how he started the site, how he’s gone about creating book bundles full of awesome titles by traditionally published and indie authors, and how he sells upwards of 3000 bundles in a 3-week period over and over again. And these are not 99-cent bundles, my friends. People often pay over $10 for the collections on his site, meaning a nice cut for the authors and also for the charities that Jason works with.

We pumped him for information on:

Creating bundles, including approaching big-name authors

Marketing bundles and ebooks in general

Finding ways to promote on tech sites, as opposed to the usual book venues

Choosing cover art for bundles

His experience with advertising on Google, Facebook, and other sites

Whether StoryBundle still accepts submissions (the answer is yes, but many of their collections are curated by authors who know other authors)

Today’s show is dedicated to Facebook marketing. How do you use the popular social media platform to sell more books and keep current readers engaged? We took turns answering questions, based on our experiences. We may not be gurus, but we’ve all been on Facebook as authors for 2-4 years, and we had quite a bit to say!

Here’s a little of what we covered:

Separate author page or personal page, what’s best?

One page or one for every series?

How do you get readers to find you and like your page?

How important is interaction, and how do you get people to engage with you?

Do authors need to file for copyright? What should you look out for when it comes to contracts with publishers? Do you need an agent to handle foreign rights and contracts or is it better to hire an ip attorney? What should you establish upfront before co-authoring a book or series with another writer?

We talked about these questions and more tonight with our guest, urban fantasy author Laura Kirwan. Laura used to be an attorney but is now focusing on her fiction. We pumped her for lots of information on the legal issues authors (especially independent authors) often wonder about, and we also discussed her experiences with KDP Select and writing for (and marketing to) a specific age group with your fiction (hint: Laura’s protagonist is not an 18-year-old orphan destined to save the world).

Do you need to file for copyright for your novel, and if so, how do you do it?

For indie authors, should you create an LLC or other entity to “protect yourself” or are you OK writing and publishing as yourself?

If you decide to take a traditional publishing contract or pursue a hybrid model (some books traditionally published and some books self-published), what should you look out for on those contracts? (i.e. getting rights back in the future, non-compete clauses that could prevent you writing in the same genre, what happens if you don’t earn out your advance?)

If someone comes along and wants to buy your foreign rights in such-and-such-country, do you need to hire an agent or is an IP attorney a better choice?

Do you have any legal recourse if you sign with a publisher or business partner in a foreign country and they don’t follow through?

The things you want to establish before co-authoring a book/series with another author.